Hello everyone, I’m starting an MSc in applied mathematics at Imperial College this September. I was also offered a place at UCL and a place on a funded Statistics course. However, Imperial’s course is the one I want to do for a number of reasons; primarily because it is focused like a laser beam on the subject material I love, and the course seems extremely challenging which will hopefully force me to improve considerably as a mathematician.

However, after doing my sums (no irony intended) I don’t think I can afford to go through with the full time course in my current financial situation. So my options seem to be (unless anyone else knows of a better option) loans, going part time and taking up a job with enough hours to subsidise my existence, doing enough part time work whilst on the full time course and thereby working myself to death, or deferring for a year and trying to earn enough cash to do the course in one sitting in a years time. Each option has something to redeem it and a flaw:

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-In the case of loans, its strength is that (at least temporarily) I can forget my money worries, but in the long term I think I would quite like to do a PhD. Having loan repayments hanging over head from my MSc would cripple my attempts to do a PhD, right?
-As for part time course – part time work, I have no idea what my course contact hours would be (something I need to talk to the department about, perhaps), or how easy it would be to work enough hours to cover a life in London, also I’d much rather finish the course in 1 year and move on to the next stage of education. I don’t know why this is; I think bizarrely I associate taking twice as long as normal to being a remedial student (a strange, irrational and entirely redundant prejudice, but nevertheless it is there). On the plus side I would be financial independent and not feel like I am owned by some alien financier.

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-The full time study - part time work option, if even feasible, has all the benefits of the part time study option but without the weird taking 2 years stigma thing, but perhaps with the addition of clinical exhaustion.
- Deferral is the last option; the main benefits are getting to do the course in 1 year, being financially independent and maybe even getting some reasonable work experience to put on my CV. The major drawback is that I expect I would probably fritter away most of the money I earned and not save anywhere near enough to complete the MSc.

So, basically I am appealing for your opinions, anecdotes and experiential wisdom to guide me to some kind of decision as to which route to take. My only other concern is that I have already signed up to and accepted (though not registered on) the full time course that starts this September; do you reckon there is likely to be many problems if I do decide I want to defer or switch to the part time course?

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I'm going to take out a career development loan for my masters. You don't have to repay it until after 1 month after the course ends, even then if you're receiving benefit you may be able to divert payments up to 17 months. You can take up to £8000. I'm going with bank of Scotland which offers an interest rate of 10% (the cheapest available). Barclays claim to offer 6.3% but they actually put it to 12.9% when you have to start paying. I discovered that just before I was going to send off the application! :S The cheek!

Hey VeryPoor, I have previously looked into CDLs, but as I stated above my concern with them is that if I do choose to do a PhD then it would be impossible with the repayments hanging over me.

Oh misunderstood that bit. I suppose it depends on how much you earn while doing a PhD, if you earn anything. I'm only doing a PhD if it's funded and has a salary.

Hi dovetailed.
I took out a CDL for my Masters, and am now doing a PhD, and the repayments are manageable. I took out £6000 and pay around £130 a month back, which when you consider that the average funded PhD-er gets over £1000 a month, is more than ok. Plus, I'm a social scientist in an extremely unusual field that doesn't offer funding normally, but I (god knows how) got some. So don't presume that debts preclude a PhD. If you do take out a CDL, as a PhD you may want to take out a graduate loan from your bank (very very good rates) which will then pay off your CDL far more cheaply.
It all comes down to how confident you are with regards to obtaining funding for your PhD.

I'm hoping to pay back my CDL (if I get it) by doing a PhD as the majority of biology ones are funded. It's nice to read that someone was successful in getting a CDL because I'm worried my application will be rejected.

Look into other options than the CDL - I was told I didn't qualify because my course was not 'professional' (social sciences), but took out a standard loan which still gave me a repayment holiday for four months and the monthly loan repayments were a LOT less. I am currently doing a PhD and the repayments are manageable - ironically, I think the CDL monthly repayments would have been too high.

I studied FT and worked PT for my Masters. It was tough and a lot of work, but I could have done a lot less and still passed IYSWIM.